A Walk on the Wild Side (Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Nelson Algren
- First Published: 1956
- Type of Work: Novel
- Genres: Long fiction, Realism, Picaresque fiction
- Subjects: North America or North Americans, Self-discovery, United States or Americans, Prostitution or prostitutes, 1930’s, West, U.S., New Orleans, Ambition, Adventure, Texas
- Locales: New Orleans, LA, Texas
A Walk on the Wild Side started as a revision of Somebody in Boots, but as it progressed, Algren transformed his serious first novel into a parody of the American Dream. Algren justified this on the grounds that, times having changed, he had to entertain readers. Moreover, disgusted by the triumph of materialism, he no longer believed that writing could change attitudes, only mock them. This apparently defensive response betrays a lack of confidence in what some critics considered to be a great idiosyncratic masterpiece of the absurd that prepared the way for such writers...
[The entire page is 965 words long]
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